Google Reveals Its Robot Cars Are Among Us

Google Reveals Its Robot Cars Are Among Us

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(Oct. 10) -- With little fanfare other than a post on Google's official blog, the search engine giant announced that it has been testing robotic cars on U.S. city streets, apparently without anybody noticing. Describing it as a "first in robotics research," Google says the self-driving cars -- modified Prius vehicles -- have already traveled more than 140,000 miles.

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Whaaat!? is Google really doing this now!? i thought tech like this wouldn't be available for the next 20-50 years but it seems like they are making some huge strides and are even testing it on the road now!

The cars operated autonomously as they navigated their way down roads and highways, but a driver able to take over control was in the vehicle at all times as a safety precaution. The vehicles were equipped with a complex array of sensors and cameras that allowed them to "see" and steer around obstacles, including other cars on the road.

how cool is this!?

www.aolnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

people didn't notice robots were driving the cars because holograms were being used to depict drivers in the seats, that is part of the report that Google will not share with you. Super tinted windows would be an option, until you consider the windshield, that can't be tented, trust me, if someone was driving in front of one of these vehicles, they would notice.

Hologram projections of people were being used to pass as real drivers.

reply to post by leira7


LOL. Leira7, people probably didn't notice that the cars were driving themselves because there was a driver in the seat, ready to take over if needed. Did you miss that bit?

I seriously doubt that they had holograms to fake a human driver even though there was already a person in the seat.

Where did you come up with that anyway??


OT though:
Other than that, very cool and clever. On top gear last night they had a car which drove itself around the test track. The car itself had to be trained by the stig first and drove by memory rather than sensors so it's not as marvelous as reported in the OP.

reply to post by leira7

reply to post by GobbledokTChipeater


Em actually surprised this is not more common. I mean the virtual physics of some games these days is so realistic that you could have a person sitting in front of a keyboard with a mouse ( refuse to entertain consoles based devices!!!) and it would easily translate to a real world environment.

They alrady have rc drones with the distances involved to operate such tech.. and with wireless/gsm etc or whatever it is nowadays, I cannot see why not.

The only thing I don't get here is whats the point of driving car wround the place, because generally people are in cars to travels places??



Ambulances need medics, fire trucks need fire crews, couriers need someone to talk to the client etc...

It's a bit moot really??

However the tech has very valid merit imo...necessity is not always the mother of invention!!

reply to post by ugie1028


Yeah, cool. I would love to know if this robotic car obeys all rules, and stops at all red lights.
Who would get the speeding ticket on the auto flash "we take your pic" and send you the ticket in the mail?

This one should be interesting. Wait till one gets "hacked'.

Originally posted by ugie1028

I just think its cool as hell that they are able to do it at all. Just imagine if the car experiences lag... OOPS TREE!

LOL it makes the term 'computer crash' more literal, doesn't it?!
How do you know when it needs a reboot? When it doesn't apply the brakes??
The 'blue screen of death' now just becomes 'death'.


I vote we keep microsoft far, FAR away from this car.

Originally posted by badw0lf
reply to post by GobbledokTChipeater

 

Em actually surprised this is not more common. I mean the virtual physics of some games these days is so realistic that you could have a person sitting in front of a keyboard with a mouse ( refuse to entertain consoles based devices!!!) and it would easily translate to a real world environment.

They alrady have rc drones with the distances involved to operate such tech.. and with wireless/gsm etc or whatever it is nowadays, I cannot see why not.

The only thing I don't get here is whats the point of driving car wround the place, because generally people are in cars to travels places??



Ambulances need medics, fire trucks need fire crews, couriers need someone to talk to the client etc...

It's a bit moot really??

However the tech has very valid merit imo...necessity is not always the mother of invention!!

You make a good point, the tech is sort of moot. I guess it will tend to lean toward public/mass transport rather than the car with one occupant. Sort of like auto pilot in jets, I guess.

You're right, the tech already exists and is more than capable. The biggest problem will be making it fail safe though. A problem with 1 car at 100kph can turn into a big pileup in heavy traffic.

I'm actually surprised that the Department of Transportation hasn't sent them a cease & desist letter. This is completely illegal - public streets are not where Corporations are supposed to be conducting research and development of unapproved and unproven autonomous driving systems.

The fact that everyone is oooing and awwing at this only goes to further show how uninformed people are about the current state of the art in autonomous vehicle technology. This is nothing new, but what is new is the unprecedented irresponsibility Google has displayed in this latest endeavor.

reply to post by GobbledokTChipeater


thats what i was thinking, but you made it sound a lot funnier... thank you!

the safety issues with this testing should raise red flags, but nothing reported on accident due to the testing so it MUST be working!

lol imagine on your dash... the BSOD error comes up... then its like George in the jungle ...

WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!!!

reply to post by harrytuttle


what unprecedented irresponsibility? They had a person behind the wheel ready to flip a switch and take over just encase the car failed to preform safely.

This is the greatest thing for traffic...The reason there's traffic is unregulated speed...Some people go fast some slow...If every car had a set destination and every car knew about every other car you could drive at max speed all the time...Get to work safe and fast...

Originally posted by harrytuttle
I'm actually surprised that the Department of Transportation hasn't sent them a cease & desist letter. This is completely illegal - public streets are not where Corporations are supposed to be conducting research and development of unapproved and unproven autonomous driving systems.

While you do make a good point, could it not be considered similar to cruise control? After all, there is a human driver in the seat with over-riding access to all of the cars controls. Though I would strongly agree with you if there wasn't a human in the car.

Also, I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of all of the 'oooers and awwers' to apologise for not being more informed about the current state of the art in autonomous vehicle technology. We welcome you as our new educator.

found this towards the bottom of the OP's Source

As part of the project, Google apparently put together a dream team of robotics researchers drawing from participants in a Pentagon-sponsored robot road race conducted in 2007. That competition, part of a series of robot races called the Grand Challenge, was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and involved driving unmanned cars across an urban-style course in Victorville, Calif.

Although Google says it coordinated its robotic cars with local police, no previous public mention has been made of the plan. Google, in the meantime is not revealing what it's next step will be for the robotic vehicles.

So a DARPA competition was the first to put unmanned vehicles on public streets or at least an urban style course. And google notified the local police with what they had planned before hand and they didn't seemed concerned.

I'm still not seeing that unprecedented irresponsibility that harrytuttle is claiming though

Originally posted by leira7
people didn't notice robots were driving the cars because holograms were being used to depict drivers in the seats, that is part of the report that Google will not share with you. Super tinted windows would be an option, until you consider the windshield, that can't be tented, trust me, if someone was driving in front of one of these vehicles, they would notice.

Hologram projections of people were being used to pass as real drivers.

edit on 10-10-2010 by leira7 because: sp

...

www.youtube.com...

Oh goodie! A car that can update my Facebook status constantly, track my movements and simultaneously send all my data straight to advertisers and the NSA, in real time. Suggest, to me, places I should visit based upon all of the places I have visited previously, and which will also do any number of other creepy things that we aren't yet aware of.

Go Google.

Oh and BTW... You want an ATS "you heard it here first" prediction that actually has some meat? How about billboards that advertise specifically for the vehicles which are currently passing them? Google will make that happen as well. Thinking "Yeah, but what if there are fifty cars in view of the billboard? How personal could that be?"

My answer... a simple algorithm which factors in all those drivers, finds the two most common likely areas of interest, and then displays a split billboard. Everybody eats... Just about everybody watches TV/movies... not too hard at all to find ads tailored specifically to small groups of people.

Google cars, Google billboards.... And to think that Demolition Man predicted it'd be Taco Bell that took over the world...

~Heff

I'm glad there was a human in the car. I wonder how the tech would respond to a situation like this:
The car is being tail-gated. A ball bounces out in front. Does it emergency stop, causing a crash, or calculate that a small object is ok to run over to avoid a crash, continue & hit the child that follows the ball?
If they can get such predictive attributes into the software, this could be really excellent to improve the quality of many disabled people's lives.
Still, star for you Heff!

Very interesting technology. But the idea and experiments to make a car drive by itself has been around for 20 years. It is getting perfected. Such technology is used and will be used by the military robots. The military already has robots that walk & run like a horse, can carry 300 pounds, balance themselves even when slipping in ice or being kicked and can go to what ever GPS coordinates given to it. Oh, and on the robots way to the coordinates, if it runs into some type of trouble, it will find it's way round.

Big Dog robot packhorse...
www.youtube.com...

There are even wheeled types of gun mounted robots...
K-13, XM-307 and Korean combat robots. The Terminator.
www.youtube.com...

I've seen this, and have also seen the latest Nissan commercial showing remarkable similarities, along with the Mercedes that stops and avoids traffic all by itself. What ever happened to PAYING ATTENTION and being responsible?! So, they're trying to pass law against cell phone use while driving (texting, hands free, etc) and all the latest cars install it, along with hard drives to store/play music and movies, not to mention GPS equipment. On the whole, it's a good idea, but there is 1 burning question...... "have we gotten so lazy and complacent that we don't even want to drive?"
It won't be long and we'll be in the Logans Run mentality with an influential blend of Idiocracy.